Nokia, in a strategically significant move, has announced that it will add a LGPL 1.4 (lesser General Public License) Open Source licensing option for the Qt UI and application framework from the release of Qt 4.5, which is scheduled for March 2009. The new licensing is more permissive as it allows the use of Qt for proprietary commercial development at no cost, thus offering greater flexibility to developers.
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That's freaking AWESOME !!!
😊
That's one mayor hurdle removed for Qt adoption in the Symbian world. Three questions though:
1) where's the AppStore?
2) wil S40 become open to developers?
3) Who care's about Maemo now the N810 has been abandoned and there's no successor hardware?
N810 has not been abandoned, but production of the wiimax version has stopped. Read a interview lately with a Nokia Boss saying it was still an important area for Nokia and new devices could be expected. They expected 5 generation for it to be profitable(or something like that) and the current is generation 3.
Maemo has not been abandoned, but the N810 wimax edition has stopped (largely due to wimax being a bit of a damp squib). The ordinary N810 is still available.
The successor hardware to the N810 was announced at the Maemo summit last autumn, it will use OMAP3 and various other gubbins. The new operating system version for the new hardware is already available to developers (under the codename Fremantle), and the new hardware itself should be released some time in the second half of 2009.
Whether the new hardware is actually another tablet or not is open to question.
Nokia has insisted on using the word "maemo" instead of "tablet" whenever talking about it, as if they're planning on putting the OS into a different kind of device. I would personally prefer them to do a mini-laptop, as the tablet form factor is far too close to their existing Symbian phones.
where's the AppStore?
That's the big question, and arguably the biggest flaw in Symbian right now. If they can vastly improve Download's contents and style, that would be a huge advance for the platform's ecosystem.
wil S40 become open to developers?
S40 uses a proprietary Nokia OS, I don't think they'll ever open it up as it's meant for lower-end feature phones. S40 phones run Java though, that's good enough for most S40 users.
Tzer2 wrote:Maemo has not been abandoned, but the N810 wimax edition has stopped (largely due to wimax being a bit of a damp squib). The ordinary N810 is still available.
Ok, thanks for correcting me.
S40 uses a proprietary Nokia OS, I don't think they'll ever open it up as it's meant for lower-end feature phones. S40 phones run Java though, that's good enough for most S40 users.
Qt would me a more interesting proposition if developers could write and sell for S40 too. Qt doesn't run on the iPhone and on Android because it doesn't have a Objective-C or a Java binding. The difference between mobile and desktops UI's is big enough to warrant two UI's to take advantage of the strong points of the platforms. That doesn't leave a lot of places where Qt makes commercial sense. Making S40 available to developers adds a commercial incencitive.
"it doesn't have a Objective-C or a Java binding"
Actually, Qt does have an official Java binding: Jambi.
I don't know of how much significance this is, but some newer S40 phones do have "Download!" icons on their desktops. They're selling non-native Java apps of course, but perhaps Nokia does intend to put proper app stores on Series 40 at some point?